We recently spoke with Lyft CEO Logan Green, whose company has become influential in the sharing economy. The popular app connects people who need rides with those willing to give them has scaled massively, growing from two to 34 cities in the past year.

Green's inspiration? The mullet.

"We refer to Lyft as a 'mullet app,'" he says. "Simple up front, a lot going on in the back."

The philosophy behind the signature '80s hairstyle has been key to Lyft's success. Even though it's a complex business — managing logistics for drivers and customers in real time — the experience for users is clean and easy, which keeps them coming back.

When you open up the car-sharing app, you're treated to a map overlay of where you are, where the nearest drivers are, and you can select where you want to go. After just a few taps on your smartphone screen, you're all set for your trip.

As Green tells Business Insider, this process is much simpler than with Zimride, the app that preceded Lyft. With Zimride, you had to select your route, select the best driver, and tend to other logistical tasks. It worked really well for college students going home over break or commuters arranging a carpool, but it wasn't a great fit for urbanites trying to get from one neighborhood to the next because it was so complicated.

When customers were using Zimride, "the amount of friction and dropoff was enormous," Green says. "But with Lyft, the system does the work of sending you the best match."

Lyft grew out of a hackathon at Zimride. It was an attempt to take the car-sharing service from desktop to mobile, which prompted a crucial design challenge.

"Mobile forced us to rethink the user experience and do something people would be able to carry out on in a couple of seconds on the mobile phone," he says. "By stripping out all the work the user used to do and putting that on the company, we were able to create a much better user experience."

It seems to be working.To date, Green says that tens of thousands of drivers have joined Lyft, who together have given millions of rides.